Fortunate Son
by Call-me-Cassandra
Summary: "It is not unusual for one child in a family to be singled out for abuse and neglect. Often the other children in the household even participate in the abuse of the scapegoat." Dudley Dursley looks back on his childhood. Some things are a lot clearer now.
1. The Arrival of Trouble

AN:

This piece was inspired in part by Paganaidd's story "Dudley's Memories," and so will where necessary conform to her story line. It is intended to be written as Dudley's memoir about growing up in a house hold where child abuse has taken place to someone else. As such, some of the details may be changed or omitted, as Dudley is a Muggle, writing for other Muggles. These changes are intentional on the part of the author. Assume that what J.K. Rowlings wrote in relation to Harry's childhood has still happened; this is just another lens through which to view it.

Fortunate Son

Growing Up in the Shadow of Abuse

By D. Dursley

To Harry

I'd like to try again to be a family.

Call me.

Chapter 1

The Arrival of Trouble

I remember the day that the boy came. I was only one and a half years old. I'm told that most people don't remember much from before they are two or even three years old, and in fairness I don't have any other memories of this time, but that morning is still etched on my mind.

I was a spoiled child; there are really no other words for it. My entire childhood, there was not a thing that I wanted that was not immediately given to me, nothing I wished for that was not immediately granted. My mother doted on me, encouraging my tantrums and my demands by telling me what a little angel I was and I believed her completely. I was denied nothing, except for the absence of the boy.

I was awoken that morning by my mother's scream, a loud piercing siren that filled me with dread. For the first time, no one came to answer my own screams. I lie alone in my room, sure that my demands would be met as instantaneously as always, but no one came. I'm sure that I wasn't ignored to too long, but to someone accustomed to instant gratification, it seemed an eternity. When my mother finally burst into the room, the look on her face silenced me. For the first time, she lacked the saccharine adoration that I always associated with her features. She was scowling as she burst into the room, but her features softened as they took in my tearstained face.

Content again with her attention and affection, it wasn't until she had strapped me into the high chair in the kitchen that I noticed it. The boy. A strange boy I had never met before was lying in MY pram, with MY teddy, in MY kitchen, being tended to by MY mother. Instead of serving me my breakfast, she was hovering over him, as though unsure of what to do now. This immediately set me off again, and I squalled my displeasure at the interloper defiling my home. He looked the same age as myself, but he never made a peep.

My mother offered me everything that she could think of, handing me porridge and sweets and toys, but nothing distracted me from the presence of Him. He had appeared in our lives as suddenly as if he had been dropped on the doorstep and I vented my rage. I promptly threw whatever I was handed at the pram, and I can still recall the small smirk that played around my mother's lips as she continued to hand me ammunition.

Even covered with flung food and surrounded by projectiles, the boy still didn't make a sound. He lie there like a doll, like he was not quite sure how he had come to this place, like he was in shock. He didn't even protest when my mother plucked him from the pram and placed him, soiled blanket and all, into a cardboard box on the floor like a recalcitrant puppy. Placed such in the corner, I soon forgot about him, as my mother set about cleaning up the mess that I had made of the pram and cooed to me sweetly about my throwing arm. Slipping me sweets for breakfast, she fussed and fluttered and doted until all was again right with my world. The boy didn't get breakfast.

AN: Thanks for reading. Please let me know what you thought. Is it good? Bad? Crap? Should I continue? Should I toss it out and forget it? I won't know unless you tell me.


	2. Don't Ask Questions

**Disclaimer: I can only dream that I will one day be creative enough to pull an internationally beloved alternate universe out of thin air and make millions from it. Sadly, I own nothing. All of the credit for these characters and their lives goes to J.K. Rowling and a bit of the inspiration came from paganaidd's story "Dudley's Memories".**

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Chapter 2

Don't Ask Questions

From the outside, we lived an idyllic existence. The successful hardworking father. The loving mother who kept the house immaculate and dinner always on the table. The cherished son that they both doted upon. We lived together in a cookie cutter neighborhood, which was completely homogenous. It was full of right angles and meticulously manicured front gardens, oozing normality from every scrupulously straight curtain. Everyone drove the same kind of car, lived the same kind of lifestyle, and knew everyone else's business.

I don't think many people knew about the boy, though. My parents certainly worked hard to keep it that way. He was a threat and a danger to our picture perfect family, and he was treated as such. After all, normal people don't raise other people's children. Normal people don't know the kind of people who get themselves killed. Normal people don't wake up one morning to find a dirty little orphan with a scar on his face suddenly intruding upon their family. Normal people would shun that abnormality, pretend that it doesn't exist, like the beggar on the street corner asking for coins. That is what my parents attempted to do.

If one were to tour my childhood home, they would find no sign of him. The pictures proudly adorning the front hall and the living room mantle featured only one child. Although there were toys enough to satisfy an army of children and food enough in the cupboards to sustain the invasion indefinitely, everything belonged to me. A quick look upstairs would find, despite the house having four bedrooms, only one was fitted for a child, and one was converted to an overflowing playroom. There was one closet filled to bursting with children's clothes, one size of children's shoes in the coat closet, and one child's safety seat in the back of the company car.

He was almost nonexistent, and that was the way my family preferred it. From the day he moved in his only room was a small cupboard under the front stairs, a cramped space shared with miscellaneous cleaning supplies and the Hoover. I didn't begrudge him this space; it was dirty and full of spiders, so I would certainly never deign to crawl inside.

As a small child, he couldn't reach the knob of the door so it was dependent upon my mother or my father to let him out. They rarely did. After all, the boy had a cot of his own, a few broken discarded toys to keep him occupied, and a bucket in the corner to relieve himself in. He had old clothes that I had discarded and what food was left over from our family dinners. What else could he possibly need?

While Freud has been largely discredited, I find some of his less controversial views on children to be valid. Freud taught that all children are blank slates, neither good nor bad. All of us are innocent of moral delineation, unable to do anything but what makes us happy, what is best for us. Morality is a learned behavior. It is necessary for someone, usually a parent, to teach the child what is acceptable behavior and what is unacceptable. What is right and what is wrong. Without this training, a child will continue to act in his own best interests, to the detriment of all.

Watching my parents, assimilating their attitudes and actions, I soon learned to treat the boy with disdain. Aggressive behavior was encouraged, even rewarded. While most parents were teaching their children the value of sharing and how to play well with others, I was taught superiority and entitlement. If I pushed the boy down, I was given sweets. If I pinched him and made him cry, he was sent back to the cupboard for disturbing the peace.

Anything that he touched, I felt obligated to take from him. After all, everything was mine anyway. Never mind that I had more toys than I could possibly play with during a given day. Never mind the fact that it was old or broken or unloved. It was _mine_. Any sense of camaraderie or kinship that may have developed from growing up together from practically infancy was quickly quelled. The boy was not a friend, was not family. The boy was trouble.

In the way of children, I trusted my parents implicitly. They loved me, because they told me so. They showered me with affection and presents and sweets, so that made them good. Parents don't lie. If they said the boy was a Freak, was bad, was trouble…then he was, unequivocally.

It wasn't until we began primary school that I realized that Boy was not the boy's actual name. I am sure on some level I had always known this, but I had never heard him called anything else in our home. As it was, when the teacher called roll on the first day of class, I had no idea who Harry Potter was. I looked around the room curiously, as I had at all the other names, waiting to assign it to a face. No one raised a hand. She called again. No response. It appeared that the boy didn't know he was Harry Potter either.

Finally, the teacher turned towards me in exasperation.

"Dudley, is your cousin here?"

I stared at her, a bit bewildered. I had a cousin?

"Your cousin who lives with you, Dudley," said Ms. Atherton, when I didn't answer. "Your cousin Harry."

I was still a bit baffled, but the boy was the only one who lived with me. I pointed in his direction, to where he sat hunched in the far back corner. The teacher made her way over to the desk and sank into a crouch beside it.

"Harry," she said a bit loudly. "Do you have a hearing problem?"

The class immediately began to snigger.

He shook his head emphatically, knowing better than to admit to any kind of problem, even if he had one.

"Okay," Ms. Atherton replied, not unkindly. "Harry, next time I call your name for roll call, I want you to put your hand up, just like everyone else. Can you do that?"

A small nod was her only reply.

"Good boy," she murmured as she made her way back to the front of the room, obviously deciding that he was just a bit touched in the head. I snickered quietly to myself. I knew the truth. The boy wasn't a good boy at all, but I would let her figure it out for herself.

That day when we got home from school, we broke one of the cardinal rules for peaceful living at 4 Privet Drive: Don't ask Questions. Especially questions about the boy. His origins had always been shadowy to me. He had just suddenly appeared one day to live in our cupboard. He was unwanted, unasked for, but we couldn't send him away. I had never put too much thought into it before, but I was now curious. After hugs and kisses had been dutifully accepted, but before the boy went back to his cupboard, I broached the subject.

"Mummy, Ms. Atherton said he's Harry," I said, pointing at the boy.

"Yes, I suppose he is," she murmured quickly, trying to steer me into the kitchen for a snack.

"She said he's a Cousin. What's a cousin?"

My mother got a look on her face as though she had smelled something extremely unpleasant, but she had never been able to deny me anything.

"It means that the boy's mother was unfortunately my sister, which is why we are stuck with him."

"Where is my mother?" the boy suddenly interjected, shocking me. It was a good question. Why didn't he have a mother and a father of his own, instead of sharing mine. Why did he not have a room and toys of his own, instead of sharing mine? Why wasn't he with his own family? Why was he in my life? I think this was the first time I ever completely realized that the boy was a boy like me, instead of some sort of creature. It was unsettling.

"Don't ask questions!" my mother snapped. "Your parents are dead. They were no-good-lazy-drunks who went off and died in a car crash and didn't have the decency to take you with them. That's where you got that horrible scar on your forehead. Now go to your cupboard and stay there."

She slammed the door behind him and stalked off to the kitchen. By the time I arrived, she had cakes and soda on the table already and was smiling beatifically at me as I prepared to dig in. Thoughts of the boy were quickly overwhelmed by a familiar swirl of sugar and affection and I beamed back. All was once again right in my world.

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**AN: Thanks to all of you who have read this piece and added it to their favorites. A special thanks to Ashtin Nightwalker, Lyssa117, paganaidd, ceara1888, Roz, Doni, B00kw0rm92, and Drayconette for your lovely reviews. Please let me know if you think that I am doing an acceptable job of integrating the memoir portion and the psychology portion, or if it is too heavy on either side. Also, let me know if there is a scene that anyone specifically wants me to explore. I would also appreciate someone pointing out anything that is too "American." I am trying to channel my inner Brit…but I don't really think I have one.**


	3. Hard Work Builds Character

Chapter 3

Hard Work Builds Character

Hard work builds character. This was my father's mantra when I was growing up, one I heard over and over again. To an extent, this is true. It is necessary for children to be given chores, to be given some form of responsibility to help them gain a good work ethic and self reliance. Children learn by seeing and by doing, and as they grow they so gain all of the skills that they will one day need to become self-sufficient. This is a common theme with most parents, even as it is a common complaint with most children. Hard work never killed anyone, much to my parent's disappointment.

The boy was a hard worker. He had to be. My mother was obsessively fixated on cleanliness, everything in our home gleamed. She took pride in sparkling surfaces, rigidly arranged appliances, and floors sanitary enough to eat off of. Our home was a showcase of her abilities as a housewife, a trophy of our upper-middle-class poshness that she wore like a shield.

Despite her obvious displeasure with his presence, the boy was the most effective tool in her arsenal. After all, as much as order appealed to her in general, she was a busy woman. A glutton for gossip, she spent most of her days monitoring the comings and goings of our neighbors, snidely commenting on their habits, secure in the knowledge that our household was still superior, despite the…blemish. She was also a loving mother, intent on giving her son as much love and affection as she could possibly force upon him in the form of sweeties, baked goods, and the best new bribes money could buy. With all of this, she really couldn't be bothered to put forth the effort to keep the house immaculate as well.

A flash of genius apparently struck her, one day, however, while pondering the situation. The boy. After all, he had been living in our home as a guest for years out of the goodness of her heart. She had given him food, clothing, a roof over his head. She could have thrown him out into the street, abandoned him at an orphanage. After all, it was not her fault that her sister had gotten herself killed. It was not her fault that she was his only living relative. She deserved some recompense for her charity, as she reminded him almost daily. The boy ought to earn his keep, ought to be grateful enough for all she had done for him to do so willingly.

As soon as primary school began, shortly after the Question Incident, my mother began training him. He seemed to quite enjoy it at first; it was an excuse to be out of his cupboard and explore the main house. He was still confined to the downstairs living areas, but it was much more space than he was accustomed to. He was somewhat handicapped in his efficiency by his small stature, indubitably made smaller by years of living in such a small space, but my mother displayed a hitherto unforeseen resourcefulness in tailoring tasks to fit him. After all, one did not have to be very big to scrub floors, as they were conveniently placed low just for him. He was armed with a tall blue stool, which gave him just enough height to reach the kitchen counter and the cooker, as well as the shelves that needed dusting in the parlor.

One of his most common chores was cooking the meals, as my mother could then be spared from having contact with the unsanitary raw meat. One never knows how many germs may lurk on the bloody flesh, and it was always better to be safe than sorry. By the time he was nine, he was already a much better cook than my mother, taking over the task entirely. He wasn't trusted alone in the kitchen, of course, but my mother enjoyed her supervisory role, making sure that he never snuck any of the food before it could find its way to the table or afterwards while he did the washing up.

He was also now allowed the special treat of being Outside. Whereas before my mother had been scandalized by the very idea of the neighbors catching a glimpse of the boy, she now ceded to the necessity of letting him out of the house. After all, a good first impression is vital and it was essential for the lawn and garden to be as rigorously manicured as possible, to leave no doubt as to the pristine condition of the interior. There was also the added bonus of not having him skulking about the house, merit in placing him out of sight and out of mind. By staying in the yard, the neighbors could look out and see, not just the boy, but the living proof of her own kindness and generosity in taking on such a burden to herself. Soon, he was weeding the gardens daily, tasked with eliminating every single plant that did not want to conform to her severely regimented ninety degree angles and pin straight edges. With the aid of his blue stool, he was also tasked with keeping the hedges trimmed just so. Though he was too small yet to operate the lawnmower, he was occasionally gifted with a pair of shears and sent outside to give the grass a quick trim, when my mother couldn't be bothered to find him anything else to do, but wanted to keep him occupied. The only duty he wasn't given was washing the car, as it was agreed that he couldn't be trusted so close to such a valuable object. Who knew what could happen?

Oddly enough, despite the benefits of hard work expounded daily by my parents, I was never given any chores. I assumed that this was because "character", whatever it was, was something that I had no need of. It was something that bad little boys needed to make them good again, and I was thoroughly convinced of my saintliness. Didn't my mother tell me every day how wonderful I was? I was her little angel, her sweet little gentleman, her brilliant gifted progeny. Why should I improve upon perfection?

Without anything any constructive means of occupying myself, I was forced to turn to destructive ones. Idle hands…and all that. I tasked myself with the duty to help the boy learn character, in my own way. I took to following him around, policing his movements and reporting back to my mother.

*~#*~*#~*

"MUUUM! He let Mrs. Figg's cat come onto the lawn! He was petting it; I saw him!"

"MUUUMMY! He burnt the rashers again! I won't eat those! I WON'T! Make him make more!"

"MUM! He was hoovering while my show was on! Mum, make him stop!"

*~#*~*#~*

As entertaining as it was to watch him receive more chores or be sent back to his cupboard, it didn't happen nearly enough for my liking. For such a bad boy, I could rarely catch him doing anything wrong, which sorely vexed me. Not one to give up, I resorted to making my own trouble, purely for his benefit of course.

*~#*~*#~*

"Mum said that you have to mop the kitchen floor"

"I did mop the kitchen. Ten minutes ago I did."

"Well _someone_ got muddy footprints all over the floor. Mop it again or I'll tell Mummy it was you."

"MUUUUUM! He broke my [insert newest favorite toy here]! He did it on purpose!"

"MUUM! He spilled soda all over the couch! Make him clean it up!"

*~#*~*#~*

Even when it was obvious that I was lying (after all, the boy was never allowed soda and knew better than to touch anything that belonged to the family), my mother always took my side. I was a pure destructive child, breaking nearly everything that I came in contact with. I suppose that is something that comes from always getting everything you want. You never realize the value of things when they are handed out like kisses or pats on the head. I crashed bicycles and rammed toy cars together with crushing force and once put my foot through the telly when my favorite show was cancelled. I had an entire extra bedroom filled with wreckage of my youth, everything from bent telescopes to broken electronics, but I never received anything more than a fond chuckle in response from either of my parents.

*~#*~*#~*

"We'll just have to go buy you a new one Diddykins. Clearly that one was made from cheap materials. I should write to the manufacturer. Imagine selling defective toys to children!"

"Little tyke doesn't know his own strength. You'll grow up to be big and strong like your old man, there Dudley."

*~#*~*#~*

Character, despite my conviction that I lacked it, has been something in my life that I have come to terms with. When the term is used, one generally assumes that it is positive, that character is good. However, one can have a bad character, or rather a weak one. I believe that character is like a muscle. It is there inside of all of us, but some people will never use it and it will remain weak and limp and attempting to flex it will only result in someone getting injured. However, with exercise, character can become strong and incandescent, something that everyone else takes notice of inside of one, like the body of a star athlete. Strong character is the mark of a great man, but without guidance, it is nearly impossible for character to develop. How is it possible for one to change the values, ethics, thoughts, and beliefs that one has accumulated through their life, taught by the ones they love? It doesn't come easily, doesn't happen overnight. It is a slow process, one that develops so incrementally that it is almost impossible to see happening. It is difficult, not for the faint of heart. There is a reason that they say people never change.

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**AN: Thank you so much to everyone who reviewed, and everyone who added this to their story alerts and favorites. I haven't had time to respond to everyone individually, but I am very grateful for the feedback. I'm sorry that it has taken me so long to update, but I will try to keep to a weekly update in the future. Thanks for sticking with me.**


	4. The Way to a Boy's Heart

**AN: So, so, sooooo sorry about the long delay. I was gone for the holidays and then I stumbled upon the author SensiblyTainted, who is fabulous and everyone should go read everything of hers. I'm a bit manic, so after reading her stories, I felt obligated to go and watch/read everything remotely related to Gundam Wing…which took a considerable amount of my time lately. I highly recommend it though. This chapter is dedicated to AnimeMangaAngel whose lovely review inspired me to keep going. Sorry to those of you I kept waiting and I hope haven't given up on me yet.**

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Chapter 4

The Way to a Boy's Heart

The boy and I were opposites in nearly every way, flawlessly natural foils to one another. I was tall for my age, he was small for his. I had short blonde hair, where he had unruly raven locks. My eyes were a pale blue, his a piercing green. My skin was healthy, flushed, unblemished, where his was ghostly pale during the cupboard months and deeply tanned during the summer and he had a rather distinctive scar zigzagging across his forehead. No one would have guessed that we were related to one another at first glance. Or at second glance. There may have been something in the shape of the eye, the curve of the lip, but for the most part, we were our fathers in miniature, each of us, and it was our mothers who had shared blood.

It came to me early on, at the almost instinctive level that children seem to possess, that despite my mother's canonizations, the boy was somehow indefinably better than me. Whereas I had always relied on sheer brawn and aggression, the boy was quick and clever. I could not hurt him if I could not catch him, and he soon realized that his slight size gave him the advantage. He could run faster and climb higher than I could hope to, and I would soon grow tired of chasing him, or bored of waiting for him to come down. Where I attacked with fists and feet, he had a sharp wit from an early age. He could instantly turn my taunts back on me with a quick cutting line, which always left me bemused until I pieced enough together to be outraged. By then he was gone.

While I was a shameless brown-noser to teachers and other adults, wheedling and cajoling them into giving me what I wanted, he was almost completely self-sufficient. I blundered my way through school and life in general, but he seemed to flit along silently, everything that he attempted coming easily to him unobtrusively. He fulfilled his duties in the house with apparent grace, never failing at a task, no matter how outrageous. Things out of his reach seemed to jump off shelves into his hands, stains miraculously disappeared out of materials, and broken objects almost seemed to repair themselves under his fingers. The fact that he went out of his way to avoid recognition and be left alone only made me resent him more, as I would have given anything to be able to attract attention.

No matter what I said or did, no matter what I tried, he seemed untouchable. Words floated over his head, blows glanced around his skin, but he managed to be almost alarmingly unaffected by anything I tried. He would pick himself up, straighten himself out, and resume whatever I had interrupted him from, as if I was only a minor distraction from something infinitely more important. As if I didn't matter.

This seemingly irrational conviction that the boy was, contrary to everything I had been told, my superior upset me greatly. After all, I knew that he was bad. I knew that he had no parents, no friends, nothing in our home to call his own. I had everything that he didn't. That should mean that I win. If he was bad, but he was still better than me, what would become of me? Would my parents find out? Would I be given even more chores than the boy? Even less food? I soon began waging a war with him, a war that I had already won, would always win, but still felt compelled to fight anyway. A war for my parent's love.

I'm not exactly sure when I began to equate that love with food, but I know that it was when I was very young. It was something concrete, something tangible that showed how much my parents loved me. It was something that had always been a visible divider between the boy and I, another something I had that he didn't. Food became a battleground in my house—and it was a battle that I was determined to win, unequivocally.

It wasn't like the boy was starved, not really. He ate breakfast most mornings, after he had cooked the rashers and sausages and eggs for the rest of the family, and after we had eaten our fill. He always had a peanut butter sandwich and an apple in his bag for lunch during the school year; appearances must be kept up after all. He was even given dinner sometimes, if he finished all of his chores for the day and hadn't done anything to upset anyone.

It never bothered me growing up that the boy barely ate in our household; in fact, I took great pleasure in pointing out the disparity. He was denied food because my parents hated him, because he was bad. I was smothered in it because my parents loved me, because I was good. To my young mind, it was as simple as that, and I reveled in it.

My food intake soon reached grotesque proportions, though to hear my parents speak of it, it was nothing that "a growing boy" didn't need. Breakfast was never anything less than a full fry-up, several servings of a plate heaped with rashers of back bacon, thick pork sausages, black pudding, fried potatoes, runny eggs, baked beans, and toast smeared generously with marmalade and butter, all covered with brown sauce and dripping with grease. Lunch was a light fare of hearty stew, thick sandwiches, fried fish or chicken fingers, always accompanied by a heaping pile of hot golden chips. Dinner was traditionally a meat and potato affair, steak or leg of lamb or juicy chops, all smothered in rich gravy made from the drippings. Fried potatoes were the only vegetables I would allow; turnips, parsnips, carrots, and leeks sent me into paroxysms of rage. Throughout the day, I sustained myself on homemade puddings, sweet fresh trifle, banoffee pies and éclairs. I could eat an entire cake in one sitting, and often did to ensure that no one else could have any of it. There was always a box of Cadbury Roses in the kitchen, or some new kind of sweet that my father had brought home, as he was nearly as fond of food as I was. I washed everything down with two liters of Coca-Cola, as many as three or four of them daily, as I could not tolerate anything as bland as milk or water. There was always something more to sample, something waiting for me in the cold box, but I was never satisfied.

As I continued to eat, I continued to balloon outward, becoming increasingly obese, though it never bothered me. I was easily twice the size of the rest of the neighborhood children, but being twice as mean, none of the rest would dare taunt me about it. By the time I was 8, I weighed over 6 stone while the boy was barely over 2 stone. It was obvious to everyone, should have been obvious to everyone that neither of us were eating a balanced diet, neither of us could be considered healthy. No one ever said a word.


	5. Secrets From the Past

**Disclaimer: Some parts of this chapter are directly lifted/paraphrased from The Philosopher's Stone. If you recognize it, it isn't mine. **

**This chapter is dedicated to B00kw0rm92 and Tamira, who have faithfully reviewed every chapter so far. Thanks for keeping me going.**

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Chapter 5

Secrets from the Past Come to Light

The day the letter came, the first cracks started to appear in my carefully sculpted idyllic bubble. The one in which my family was perfect and the boy only got what he deserved. The one in which I was perfect and only got what I deserved. I had no reason before that day to question my parents when they told me that all was as it should be. While the change at this point in my life was not drastic, by any means, it was the starting point.

Life up to this point continued much the way that it always had. My parents continued to shower me with food and gifts and remind me of my own superiority on a daily basis, as though if they said it enough times it would become reality. The boy, or the freak, as my father had taken to calling him, continued to live in his cupboard and complete his chores to my mother's exacting standards. All was right in the comforting routine of my life.

School was really no different from home for the boy. I made sure of that. After all, he was too dangerous to be interacting with normal folk, really. He might make them bad as well. Most students avoided him on their own. Dressed in my old clothing that hung off him like a tent, with his Sellotaped spectacles and his eerie green eyes, he was the kind to quickly be ostrasized from the playground. But if I saw anyone trying to reach out to him and getting a little too friendly, I felt that it was my duty to persuade them to leave him alone. I always found my fists very persuasive.

The main difference was in his objective. Whereas at home, he was asked to do better than his best work, at school it was his duty to ensure that he never did better than I did. He was soundly punished at home for each test in which he managed to surpass my own score, which to be honest was all of them in the beginning. At home, he could just be ordered to complete my homework for me or I could sabotage his work on the way to school, but there was no getting around superior test scores. My parents always made sure to let the teachers know that they were certain he was cheating somehow. They informed the teachers of his poor, drunken, unemployed parents who had gone and gotten themselves killed and how though they did their best for him, he was Trouble.

That was really all it took for the teachers to put him in a little box in their minds in which he was automatically suspect in any and all classroom incidents, even though he had never caused a classroom incident up to this point. When some friends and I chased him up onto the roof of the school building one day, he was blamed, not I. When I didn't do my homework and claimed that he had stolen it and ruined it, I was believed and not him. He was even blamed one day when someone dyed the teacher's wig, even though he was sitting on the other side of the room and hadn't been near her all morning. Such was the power of reputation. The good one of our family was enough to make others believe our stories. After all, why would we lie about something like that?

But anyway, I was talking about the letter. For children, there is something magical about letters. Before the age when bills and summons and subscriptions are common place, letters are scarce and always hold something wonderful, like an invitation to a party or money for one's birthday. It was something to be cherished. I rarely got mail when it wasn't a special occasion; the boy never did.

The morning began like any other, with the family sitting down to a hearty breakfast, prepared by the boy, of course. I was taunting him about the school I had been accepted to, while he would be attending the local comprehensive wearing my old hand-me-downs that my mother had just finished dying grey. When the mail came, there was a brief scuffle over who would retrieve it, but the boy was sent, of course. There seemed to be nothing of import, but then I saw it. The boy was sitting at the table, staring at a letter. I was baffled, but I seized the opportunity to cause trouble for him.

"Dad! Dad, Harry's got something!"

My father promptly snatched the letter from him, sneering at his protest with a "Who'd be writing to you?"

Apparently, the question was rhetorical. As soon as he noted the return address, my father's face turned a horrible shade of green, which faded quickly into a skeletal white. He obviously knew who it was from, but he wasn't telling. The boy and I were quickly banished from the kitchen, and I could only catch pieces of the furious conversation between my parents over what should be done about this new development. My father attempted, somewhat ridiculously after his initial reaction, to pretend that the letter had been only mistakenly addressed to the boy.

The biggest change that the letter brought was the boy leaving his cupboard and moving into my second bedroom, where all of my excess toys were kept. I was furious and threw the largest tantrum that I can recall ever throwing, which in a life filled with tantrums up to this point, is impressive. I shouted, I threw things, I hit my father, kicked my mother, even tried my hand at forcing tears and vomit, but to no avail. For the first time in memory, my father denied me something that to my mind was easily attained. He seemed strangely tentative, as though he were attempting to walk silently over broken glass. As if something were coming.

And something was coming. When there was no response to the first letter, another was sent, and another after that. For a month, the letters came with increasing frequency, until they were a daily occurrence, but still my father burned them all and attempted to pretend that they had been mistakenly addressed. With each new missive, however, he became more and more desperate and I began to fear for his sanity. He harangued the post man, attempting to keep them from being delivered, and when that failed took to sleeping in front of the mail slot to prevent anyone else from getting to them. He boarded up the front door entirely, so that we had to get our milk delivered through the window. At one point, he packed us all in the car and drove us to first an out of the way hotel and then a small shack on an island off the coast, in an attempt to evade the letters, but the Sender of the Letters must have hired a private investigator, as the letters always caught up to us.

By this point, I was completely bewildered. Someone was going to extraordinary lengths to contact the boy. Greater lengths than I could ever imagine anyone going to for me. I would have dismissed it, if not for my father's erratic actions and the subtle tension in my mother. They were afraid of something, though I couldn't imagine what it could be. It never occurred to me that they might be afraid of the repercussions if the boy ever told anyone that he lived in a cupboard and ate table scraps. I created all sorts of scenarios in my mind, from organized crime to long lost family, but the truth turned out to be even stranger than I had imagined.

We were staying in the miserable shack, when the man found us. Clearly exasperated with my family's refusal to reply, the Sender of the Letters finally sent someone to hand-deliver a letter to the boy and return with an answer. My father attempted to bar him from the house and send him on his way, but this man was a giant, towering over my father and intimidating him into silence, a feat that I have never seen repeated. He proceeded to tell us a bizarre story that began to put faint cracks in my world, in my deep seated beliefs.

The letters, it seemed, were invitations to attend an elite boarding school in Scotland, and were merely a formality. The boy would be attending, regardless of my parent's views on the matter, the man made clear. The boy had been down to attend the school since birth—both of his parents had been alumni at the top of their class—and a trust fund had been set aside by them to take care of the tuition and associated costs. It was a prestigious place for gifted students, and the boy received top marks on the placement tests the man had brought with him. My father attempted to protest, that as his guardian he wouldn't stand for such a thing and that the boy couldn't possibly qualify. And then things went from bad to worse. In the midst of the melee, the man mentioned the boy's parents in glowing terms, which set my mother off. She went off on a diatribe against her sister, the sister that she generally refused to admit that she had ever had.

"She got a letter just like that and disappeared off to that—that school—and came home every holiday swanning about as if she owned the place and she were so much better than the rest of us. I was the only one who could see her for what she was—a freak! But for my mother and father, oh no, it was Lily this and Lily that, they were proud to have such a genius in the family! Then she met that Potter at school and they left and got married and had you, and of course I knew you'd be just the same, just as strange, just as—as—abnormal—and then, if you please, she went and got herself blown up and we got landed with you!"

The vitriol of this attack shocked me almost as much as what it revealed. It seemed that what I had known up until this point about my deceased aunt had been rubbish, and I couldn't process the sudden influx of information. My mother, it seemed, had lied to me and the boy. For whatever reason, she had lied. She _could_ lie. More information was quick to follow, however, before I could fully absorb this development.

"Blown up?" The boy's face was deathly white. "You told me they died in a car crash!"

"CAR CRASH! A CAR CRASH! You mean the boy doesn't even know what happened to his parents? You never told him!" The giant man was incensed, but calmed himself enough to explain to the distraught boy the details of his parent's death with compassion.

The boy's parents had not, it seemed, been killed in a car crash. Nor had they been alcoholics or unemployed. To hear the man speak of them, they had been perfect—beautiful, brilliant, and blissfully in love. They were both working as diplomats for the government, attempting to mediate during the Troubles and to reach a peaceful conclusion to the conflict. They were persuasive and charismatic, and they came to the attention of the IRA in 1981. The boy survived the bombing of their little house; his parents did not.

It was settled. The boy was taken to buy school supplies with his trust fund money by the giant and I was left to ponder the sudden shaking of my faith in my parents, who had never lied to me about anything before, to my knowledge. If they had lied about this, what else had they lied about? I quickly put aside such musings as we returned home, and life fell back into its old familiar patterns. It seemed less important; after all, it was only a lie about the boy, a lie about dead people. It didn't concern me. I felt strange around the boy now however, as if I were living with a stranger. He now had a bed room and fewer chores and my father spoke to him as though someone were watching their interactions from the outside. For the most part, my parents seemed to have adopted a new strategy. Instead of monitoring the boy and ordering him about, they now pretended that he was invisible or that he was already gone. We moved about each other cautiously until we went our separate ways, me to my father's old school and he, strangely enough, to his.

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**AN: I love the Irish, I'm actually living in Ireland, so no flames please on this choice. I chose the Troubles and the IRA specifically because after research this was the most likely choice for a terrorist attack in the UK in the 1980's. I wanted to keep the spirit of the their deaths as similar as I could while masking mention of the Wizarding World, and this seemed the best way to do so.**

**Just to let everyone know, I am giving up fanfiction this year for Lent, as I have been spending entirely too much time on it lately and I need to step back and re-prioritize my life. I will continue writing, however, so look for many updates after Easter. Sorry for the delay that this will cause, but I believe that my writing will improve if I have more time to dedicate to it.**


	6. Living in Cages

**AN: Thanks to everyone for all of their support over Lent! I've had so much free time these past weeks that I re-read the HP books, took up guitar lessons, and started going to the gym again. I am, however, so so so glad to be back. This chapter is dedicated to history, who gave me my 100****th**** review. Also, I've gone back and made some minor adjustments to the previous chapters. Nothing major and nothing to change the plot, but I just tidied them up a bit. Enjoy!**

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Chapter 6

Living In Cages

My first year at Smeltings was nothing like I anticipated. I was used to being the biggest and the strongest out of any crowd, or at least the scariest. Suddenly, I realized just how young I was, mixed in with all of the older students. I was now back at the bottom of the pile socially. Gone was the respect, or the fear masquerading as such, that I had earned from my fellow students back in Surrey. Gone was the constant support and edification of my parents, telling me that no matter what happened I was still the best. The other students were bigger, stronger, smarter, and meaner than I was, and my mouth got me into trouble more than once in the first months.

I soon learned to feign submission to the older students and to ingratiate myself to them in the same way that I had done to teachers and parents alike back home. I learned that by being on good terms with them, it gave me a bit of power over the students my own age, who were too frightened of the older kids to even go near them. I continued to gain weight rapidly throughout the year, putting on two more stone before the year was through. The added pounds distanced me further from the students my own age, giving me back even more of the power that I had wielded in primary school. I soon had a similar posse of "friends" surrounding me, those eager to make nice with someone who had established dominance and those sadistic enough to enjoy the games of hunt and chase that we played with the smallest of our school mates. I had had many years of experience playing with the boy, many years to refine my technique and learn how best to hurt someone, and my tips and ruthlessness bought me even more favors.

I enjoyed my freedom and my new very grown up status as a boarding school student, but I enjoyed my Christmas and Easter breaks from school just as much. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I had my parents all to myself. They weren't worrying about what trouble the boy was getting into or having to monitor his chores or even talking about how horrible he was. Since he, to no one's surprise, opted to stay at school for his breaks, it was like he didn't even exist. It was a peaceful time, one of the most peaceful that I had ever known in my family. My father never turned that deep shade of red that signaled that the freak had done something to put him in a rage. My mother never got the distasteful look on her face, as if she had just been forced to look at something that offended her every sense. They were happy and relaxed, and spent all of their time giving me all of the doting and affection and gifts that I had been sorely lacking at school.

The boy returned, however, so did the tension that he caused. Unfortunately, the school would not allow him to board there over the summer. My parents checked. When we went to pick him up from the train station, it took me a few minutes to recognize him. He looked so different, and as I would later realize, so healthy. He too had gained a good deal of weight, but it suited him. His muscles were more developed and he looked like he had been spending time outside, which may have had something to do with the cricket bat in his bag. He was smiling and laughing with some other students and others were waving and calling to him as they left. He was the picture of a normal twelve year old boy, but I had never seen him look normal before, and it was a shock.

The ride home was quiet and he quickly lost the smile, but I couldn't help sneaking looks at him the whole way. The subtle differences that I had always sensed between us were now much more prominent, and I hated it. I knew that I was overweight, but it had never really bothered me until I watched the graceful, effortless way that he carried himself. He had lost that hunted, cowed expression in his eyes and though he seemed alert and tense, he didn't seem afraid. He had gained something during his time at the posh Scottish school, or something of his had been polished and refined. There was a sense of superiority to him, not an arrogance or a smugness, but a seemingly unconscious class that set my teeth on edge.

It set my parents on edge as well. For the first few weeks, they once again adopted the attitude that if they ignored him, he didn't exist. He could sit at the table, watch the telly in sitting room, do homework at the dining room table, and they seemed to look through him, attempting to recreate the carefree attitude of the year without him. It didn't last long. My mother seemed to be of the impression that he was flaunting his intelligence, and she banned his books from the house proper, allowing them only in his room. It was obvious that they were all far beyond my capabilities to understand, and it infuriated her to see evidence of him having bested me in any way.

Then there was the owl. As a biology project, students had apparently been given tawny owl hatchlings to rear over the summer with the instructions to monitor its growth and behaviors and write an essay on the experience. It was several months old when he returned, and it was a menace. Nocturnal, it kept us up all night, screeching and banging against its cage. My mother, convinced that it would give us all diseases, made my father padlock it into its cage, which only seemed to agitate it further. When the boy couldn't keep it quiet during an important dinner party for some of my father's clients, my father blamed the boy for their failure to sign an order with his company, rather than our family's obsequious mannerisms and father's boring golf jokes.

Finally, my father hit on an idea to recreate the sense of the boy not being there, with him actually not being there. The next day, he installed a lock on the outside of the boy's bedroom door and a cat flap at the bottom. Bars were placed outside his bedroom window, despite it being on the first floor. The neighbors had already been told back at the start of term that the boy had been shipped off to St. Brutus's Secure Centre for the Incurably Criminal Boys. They had little trouble believing that the bars were necessary to keep him from sneaking out at night, for their own protection of course. Or worse yet, to keep the poor disturbed child from jumping out of the window, touched in the head as he was. He was fed slices of bread or cold soup or things going bad in the back of the refrigerator whenever my mother remembered and was let out for monitored five minute bathroom breaks in the morning and evening. Other than that, we could go back to pretending that he did not exist. When his friends rang the house, we pretended that they had the wrong number. When they sent post, it was thrown immediately into the bin. I once again had my parents all to myself, my parents didn't have to worry about what the boy would do to destroy our family next, and the neighbors soon ran out of things to gossip about. We were happy.

Until the night we were torn from a sound sleep by a loud clanging noise on the front lawn. Apparently, when his friends didn't hear from him, they became concerned. What he may have told them to merit that concern, what he may have been saying about his life at our house to immediately prompt a rescue mission at his silence, is I am certain what caused my father so many sleepless nights after the incident. We looked out the window to see the boy climbing down a ladder with his bags and his owl, and several other boys detaching the window bars from a chain on the back of their car. My father rushed down as fast as he could to stop them, but by the time he made it to the front lawn, the car and the boy were long gone.

I was overjoyed by this development, that the boy would be out from under our feet once again, but my parents did not share my enthusiasm. I couldn't understand why, had no concept of the legal ramifications possible if the boy spoke about his treatment in our household. To me, that was just the way that things were, the way that boys like him should be treated. My parents however, were clearly worried about some impending doom, and it tainted the rest of the summer. My father especially was on edge, jumping whenever the phone rang or he passed patrol cars in the street. My mother informed the neighbors that he had been taken back to the Secure School as he had been out of control at home, and the bars lent credence to her story. She spent the summer looking pinched and pale, avoiding gossip instead of seeking to be in the middle of everything, her usual role. Shortly before term began, my mother received a phone call from a strange woman, thanking her for allowing the boy to spend the summer with her children. It seemed that the boy had not been telling tales after all, and my parents relaxed.

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**VIP AN: Okay, this story was originally only meant to be six chapters, but it has developed into something more than my original concept, which is in large part due to all of the support and warm fuzzies from your wonderful reviews. Now, there are two paths that the story could take, and I would really like to have everyone's input before I continue. Path the First: I continue on in the vein that I have been and closely mirror the events of the books, just changing them to make them muggle-friendly. Path the Second: I write as if Harry had a perfectly normal existence at school for the most part and focus mainly on Dudley's development and growth as an adult. I feel like whilst the events of HP are amazing and magical, they are totally unbelievable in the muggle world, and if I were to read a memoir with all of this drama in it, I would assume he James Frey'd it and not take it as seriously. I would still have some minor mentioning of Harry's adventures, but I'd like to focus mainly on Dudley and his metamorphosis as he comes to understand what his parents did. I only don't want my readers to be offended if I minimalize Harry's role. Please let me know what you think and give me your opinions. I have tentative chapters prepared for both plotlines; I just need some guidance as to which path you would prefer to see.**


	7. Turning and Turning

**Disclaimer: This story is mine, but it's characters and concepts belong to JK Rowling, and I am neither getting paid for this story or receiving any compensation from it (other than the personal satisfaction I receive from reviews ;) ).**

**Since there seems to be some confusion from reviewers, this story is based on a concept from paganaidd's story "Dudley's Memories" and as such is Dudley's reflection on his past in the form of a memoir published in the muggle world. Everything still happened according to canon, details were just changed to protect the Statute of Secrecy and to keep people from ****believing him to be a crazy person. I hope this clears things up for some of my readers. Now, enjoy your extra long chapter!**

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Chapter 7

Turning and Turning

My second year at school was much like my first. I was now respected by those who had already been made aware of my combination of trigger temper and sadistic sense of humor and I quickly showed the new firsties why they should stay out of my way. I continued to charm my teachers with obsequious compliments and my "innocent" face, which I had perfected into an art form. I was a skilled liar, able to look any adult in the face and spin a story without the slightest niggle of guilt. I'd been lying for years about the boy, after all, and by this point it came as naturally to me as truth, if not a bit more so.

Towards the end of term, I got a call from my mother, informing me that she had bad news. It seemed the boy had fallen down an oubliette while searching for a young girl that went missing and been bitten by an adder. He had been found before too much time had passed however, and both he and the girl, who had also fallen, had been rescued. Unfortunately, my mother said, he would make a full recovery. The school, she had sniffed, had wanted to inform her of his heroic rescue of the girl, as his shouts had been what had let them find the unconscious child, and to let her know that she needn't be concerned about his health. She was very disappointed that we had come so close to being shut of him, only to have him walk away unscathed once more.

I was a bit chilled by her attitude. I could tell that she meant it. That she wouldn't be fussed at all if the boy were dead. I had often wished for the boy to be gone, to have never been sent to live with us, or for him to run away or be taken away by some long lost relative, but I had never thought of him dead. And if I were honest with myself, I had never really wanted him gone. Not really. If he weren't there, who would I have to chase about the house? Who would serve as my own personal punching bag whenever I was frustrated? Who would I ridicule with my friends? Who would I blame when something happened that I knew would make my mother fuss? Who would my father spend all of his time complaining about at the dinner table? While of course I didn't like the boy and of course I wanted him gone, he was a constant in my life. I wasn't sure what my life would be like if he were actually gone and we didn't have to spend so much time and energy wishing he were elsewhere.

By the time he returned from the school, he was looking well again and my mother decided to re-implement the policy of ignoring the boy until he went away. He was given back his usual chores of course, but no longer locked in his room, as bringing him meals was really too time consuming. I myself mostly tried to avoid him. I had taken up semi-permanent residence in the kitchen, as my mother had recently bought a television for the room, and allowed her to feed me continuously all summer. She felt that I was being sorely neglected at school, and that I needed some home cooking to put me to rights. The boy spent most days alone in his room, reading I presumed, or some other such rubbish.

The tenuous peace was broken by the arrival of my father's sister Marge in July. My Aunt Marge was a large, forceful woman very like my father. They had the same large build, the same hair (moustache included), and the same low opinion of the rest of society. Together, they could spend many happy hours roundly abusing everything from the state of the economy to the way that young people dressed nowadays. Her favorite topic, other than her yappy bulldogs, was the boy. Unlike my parents, who wished to see him as little as possible, it gave her great delight to have the boy sit beside her so that she could point out all of his faults in a loud voice. There were many to choose from and she could do so all day, if she chose.

One day, while he was stuck listening to an enumeration of his character flaws and I was avoiding another wet, whiskery kiss, I was struck by boredom and wandered into his bedroom. It was once my toy room, after all, and my parents had never bought much of anything for him. In my mind, most of the things in the room still belonged to me, and that made it still more my room than his. I spent some time digging through his school trunk, which was still completely packed up, as if he anticipated leaving at any time. I found mostly uniforms and school books that I was certain would send me into a coma from boredom before I even finished the first page. There were writing utensils, notebooks full of scribbles, empty candy wrappers, and awards for his cricket performance and school accomplishments. Most of it I discarded immediately as being unworthy of my time, but an oddly shaped book caught my curiosity.

It was bound in soft brown leather, obviously expensive, and tucked away in the bottom of his belongings like something secret or precious. My first thought was that it was a journal of some sort, and I would find some dark intrigue to hold over his head. Seeing that first page was a shock. My grandparents had died before I was born, but my mother had some photos of them in an album. This was obviously a family portrait and I stared at the two little girls pictured with them. One was my mother, her blonde hair and long face unmistakable even on the body of a nine-year old. Strange as it was to see my mum younger than myself, it was the pretty little girl beside her that most caught my eye. Though I had never seen any pictures of her before, she was obviously my mysterious aunt. Though they were sisters, she could not have been more different from my mother. Her hair was a brilliant red and her eyes were green, the same green as the boy's. It was her smile though, beaming from that heart shaped face, which really set the sisters apart. It was wide and happy, showing off the gap where two of her teeth were missing. She had her arms wrapped around my mother's waist and looked very very…alive. For the first time, seeing her sitting there with my mother and my grandparents, she became real. It struck me that she really was a part of my family, the same way that my Aunt Marge was. She was my aunt and she was dead. It made me feel a strange twinge of sadness, even though I had never known her, even though she was the boy's mother and the reason that we were stuck with him. My father had only the one sister and his parents were also dead, so I had never grown up with family about, never had anyone other than my parents. Seeing that photo of people I should have known sent a shiver up my spine.

Shaking it off, I quickly flipped the page and saw what must have been the boy's father, with his parents. I assumed that they were also dead, as otherwise, the boy would have surely lived with them. The boy looked exactly like his father, except for the eyes. They shared the same unruly hair, the same thin wiry frame, the same patrician nose. They even wore a similar style of glasses, ironically, as I knew my mother had picked them up at a rummage sale somewhere. It was obvious from the clothes and accessories of this boy and his parents that he came from wealth and privilege. I recognized the air of someone who had been pampered and doted upon, and the look in his parents' eyes was the same that I saw in mine. It was surreal, almost like seeing the boy like that, surrounded by love and affluence, and I once again flipped the page.

The book was packed full of images, all of the two children growing up. Most of them were after the age of 11, clearly taken at a school, which would make it the school that the boy was at now. There were images of parties and school awards programs, cricket games and lazy afternoons on the grounds. The boy was always surrounded by the same three other boys, all of whom had the mischievous air of good natured trouble makers. The girl too had a number of friends around her at all times, and it was obvious that they were both very popular and well-liked. When they seemed around seventeen or so, they began appearing in pictures together and soon after took on the rosy glow of young love. There were pictures of date nights and dances, pictures of their wedding and of the woman growing more and more heavily pregnant.

The final picture in the book was another family portrait, this one of the boy himself and his parents. I looked at it for a long time. The thing that had struck me through all of the pictures of the two together, and was so clear now, was the look of pure love and adoration of their faces, not just for each other, but for the boy as well. They looked like they were both part of the same whole, somehow, like all they needed in the world was right beside them. It was very strange to me. Although my parents showered me with presents and praises, there was no talk of love in our house. I can't remember my parents ever looking at each other with that dazzling affection in their eyes, or even holding hands or kissing. They were quite formal with one another, as if they were playing the role of breadwinner and homemaker. Though they did so very well, it was stilted and regimented, like everything in their lives. They were more like business partners, working together to make sure that their lives were as orderly and ordinary as possible.

When I had gone into the boy's room, I had been looking to destroy or steal something, to have something to hold over him, but I carefully took the book filled with the images of dead people and tucked it back into the bottom of the trunk. Ruining it would feel like desecrating a cemetery and I knew that the images would already haunt me enough without giving them a reason. I put everything back where I found it and quietly left the room.

I spent the next few days mulling over the images, trying to convince them to leave my brain. Things went on much as they had in the preceding days, and if I seemed absorbed no one noticed. On the last day of Aunt Marge's visit, however, everything came to a head.

My father, before she had arrived, had somehow coerced the boy into pretending for the week that he really did attend St. Brutus's Secure Centre for the Incurably Criminal Boy and she had spent much of the time orating on how she had known from the start that he would go wrong. At dinner that night, however, she took it too far for even the mild mannered boy to ignore.

A bit far in her cups, she started in on him once more, this time placing the blame on the boy's parents as well.

"It all comes down to blood, as I was saying the other day. Bad blood will out. Now, I'm saying nothing against your family, Petunia," she told my mother condescendingly, "but your sister was a bad egg. They turn up in the best families. The she ran off with a wastrel and here's the result right in front of us."

She seemed oblivious to the tension that she was causing around the table. The boy was white, his fists clenched and he didn't appear to be breathing. My mother, also, was looking very strange. Her face was quite red and her teeth were biting her lower lip, as if to keep herself from speaking out. I suddenly half expected her to defend her sister, even though I knew that she hadn't been fond of her. Family should count for something after all. My father was also looking uncomfortable, as if he hoped this would be over soon so the lies he had told would once more be safe.

"This Potter," she boomed, taking another swig of brandy, "You never told me what he did?"

"He didn't work," my father bit out quickly, giving the boy a quick glare to remind him to remain silent. "Unemployed."

"As I expected! A no-account, good-for-nothing, lazy scrounger who—"

I was suddenly struck by the memory of one of the photos I had come across. The pair had been a few years older than myself, maybe fifteen or sixteen, and the picture had clearly been snapped in the middle of a row. The girl's face was flushed with anger and she was pointing her finger at the boy, clearly in the middle of giving out to him. The boy was attempting to look penitent, but there was mischief in his eyes, as if he had set her off on purpose. My quick eyes had picked up the designer watch on his wrist, the high end cut of his clothes, and the expensive shoes he was wearing. They hadn't looked like wastrels or scroungers or bad eggs in the photograph. They had looked like privilege and promise. He was perfectly at home in his wealth and class, wearing it like a second skin, and she had been secure enough of her place there to risk alienating someone who could have helped her advance in society. Rather than cozy up to him as I would have done and courted his favor, she had fought with him and seemed almost disdainful of him, just as at home in his world as he was. Hardly no-accounts, they had seemed so far beyond the world that I lived in that they might as well have been wearing pointed hats and flying on broomsticks.

"He was not!"

I was brought out of my musings by the boy's shout. Unable to keep quiet any longer, he was now standing on his feet, face red with rage and trembling in anger. My father quickly tried to ply my aunt with more brandy and send the boy off to his room, but my aunt wouldn't allow it.

"Go on, boy, go on. Proud of your parents are you? They go and get themselves killed in a car crash (drunk, I expect)—"

"They didn't die in a car crash!" The boy spat out. I'd never seen him this angry. Never really seen him angry at all. Before he went off to school, he didn't have much of a back-bone. Not that I can blame him after life in our household. He always went about his duties, doing what he had been told, ignoring the verbal slaps and slander that were a daily part of his life. He could snipe back well enough and get his own over on me, but he never dared say anything untoward to my parents or any other adults, for that matter. This vehemence was new.

Marge was beside herself with fury at being contradicted. She too lurched to her feet, her face going an alarming shade of purple and each of her three chins began to quiver.

"They died in a car crash, you nasty little liar, and left you to be a burden on their decent, hard-working relatives! You are an insolent, ungrateful little—" She suddenly quit speaking, seemingly moved beyond words in her wrath. Collapsing back into her chair, her face went white and she broke out into a sweat. It soon became apparent that something more was wrong as she began clutching her chest.

In all of the confusion that followed—my father shouting and shaking Aunt Marge, who had stopped responding, my mother dialing 999 and hysterically giving details to the dispatcher, me trying to finish my pudding before it went completely cold—no one noticed that the boy was gone. It seemed that he had once more had enough, and after the ambulance had left and my father headed upstairs to teach him a lesson, we discovered that he and all of his belongings were nowhere to be found.

Before my parents had even begun to panic about this turn of events, and the threat of exposure that it raised, the doorbell rang and brought with it a whole new world of trouble. Standing at the door were two detective sergeants from the National Counter-terrorism Security Office. They were searching for the boy. Unbelievably, the detectives told us that the man who had leaked the boy's parents location to the IRA and was also responsible for an additional bombing that killed 13 people, had escaped from prison and they had reason to believe that he would come looking for the boy. He had gone a bit funny being locked up in prison for 12 years, and he had been heard to be muttering about the boy, the only person who had ever escaped one of his traps alive.

My mother immediately scented an opportunity and began wailing about how the boy had left for a walk a few hours before and hadn't yet arrived home. She told them that she was beginning to be worried about him being out so late after dark and had just been about to leave the house looking for him when they arrived. She couldn't quite keep the hope out of her voice when she asked them if they didn't think that he may have been murdered already, but I didn't think that the detectives picked up on it. They left immediately, promising to scour the area and do whatever it took to get the boy returned safely. They had known his parents after all, so they would all work especially hard on this particular case.

My parents were both beside themselves all evening. My father went to hospital to see Aunt Marge, who was resting comfortably and would make a full recovery, but my mother paced. I'd never seen her like that before, not even the previous summer when the boy had run off with his friends. Now the coppers were involved, and she was becoming desperate. She kept muttering to herself about hoping the boy was lying in a ditch somewhere, hoping he wouldn't be in any shape to talk. This was the first time it ever really struck me that something was wrong about the way the boy was treated, something was not normal. Of course, the police just didn't realize that they boy deserved it, but my mother still seemed to believe that something bad would happen if he talked about our family. I wasn't entirely sure what it would be, but I was very uncomfortable with the roiling unease filling the air that night.

Hours later, the detectives rang to let us know that he had been found. The boy had hopped a bus to London and had been spotted by an officer as he got off. The detectives seemed to shrug his running away off as a boys-will-be-boys type of youthful indiscretion and my parents visibly relaxed at their casual attitude. They asked if we would mind, in the interests of everyone's safety, if the boy were to stay with his friends for the remainder of the summer. It seemed that the head of the family he had stayed with the previous summer worked for the Ministry, and the home was much more secure than our own. My parents were delighted—free of the boy for the remainder of the summer, with the blessings of the law enforcement and the Ministry. They seemed to assume that if he were going to talk, he would have done so by now, and determined to make the most of the situation. We went on holiday in Majorca, and put all thought of the boy out of mind until next summer.

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**AN: Wow! I have been blown away by the support for this story. I've never even had a story reach 20 reviews before, and now I am approaching 200. Muchas gracias to all who have reviewed and added this to your favorites and story alerts. To my anonymous reviewers and those of you who have disallowed private messages, thanks a million.**


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